TripAdvisor Deepens Its Play in Restaurants With Pending La Fourchette Purchase

Kia Kokalitcheva, VentureBeat

- May 08, 2014 11:02 am

Skift Take

Knowing TechCrunch’s history of speculative acquisition numbers, the $140 million is not likely correct. No matter the cost, the deal speaks to TripAdvisor’s play in the restaurant market, which is already bigger than most give it credit for.

— Jason Clampet

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Restaurant reservation services seem to be all the rage this week. Yesterday fancy-bookings app Table8 announced a new cash infusion, and today TripAdvisor announced its acquisition of LaFourchette.

Though TripAdvisor already had a partnership with this “OpenTable of France” company, it has apparently agreed to acquire LaFourchette for about $140 million, according to a report.

LaFourchette, which operates in France, Switzerland, and Spain, provides online reservation software, consumer-facing apps, and APIs for third-party developers to help restaurants increase their business and make better use of their data.

The company claims to have 12,000 restaurants in its network.

LaFourchette’s main competitor is OpenTable, and the acquisition is likely to help the company reach the scale necessary to take on its competitor by leveraging TripAdvisor’s resources.